My alma maritima HMS Beagle has indeed formed an alliance with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to work together on little understood oceanic phenomena.
When in January 1832 I constructed a rudimentary trawl which I towed from Beagle’s stern, who could have imagined that in so few generations her descendent would also be sampling plankton, but this time with her efforts watched and recorded in several spectra by men and women passing overhead at a speed of 17200 miles per hour?
Several of the people involved in this project have spoken privily to me of their pride that a modest British charity has attracted a scientific partmer of such stature as NASA.
With great exasperation one confided in me that some 10 days ago he had informed the press office at the Department of Universities Innovation and Skills (the government department responsible for promoting and encouraging science) that the agreement was about to come to fruition and be announced. The new science minister Lord Drayson has expressed an interest in space science as a means of inspiring a new generation of scientists and engineers.
The HMS Beagle Project had thought that the NASA collaboration, which will give British school children the chance to participate in this square-rigger/space station research, and a lucky few to talk to astronauts in orbit, might merit a sentence of approval from the Minister for Science.
Today they were told that the DIUS press office had been ‘too busy’ to pass their press notice before the minister’s eyes. However, a glance at the prints reveals they had managed to extract a paeon of praise from him about a car which it is hoped will travel at 1000 miles per hour. An extrordinarily useful conveyance on a congested island at a time of declining fuel availability, economic recession and global warming, and one which must be warmly applauded.
If anyone else in the field of science practise or public engagement has any similar examples of such excellent and energetic encouragement of the voluntary science sector by Britain’s civil servants, I shall be happy to highlight these cases too. chazdarwin (at) googlemail.com.
The Beagle Project did not know to whom he vented. I hope it helped ‘decompress’ him in the modern parlance. He had been muttering about about banjo strings and sanded handles.
And if I may say, oh very funny.
Charles, old mucker—I’m afraid your ultimate paragraph is completely lost on me. I blame this dingo wine I’ve been imbibing.
Ulitimate, or penultimate?
Pen: he was sufficiently aggrieved at the idleness of the press office that he was contemplating attaching a pair of sanded wooded handles to a length of wire. For what purpose I have no idea.
Ultimate: daguerrotypeshopping (as we used to call it in my day) an astronaut’s helmet upon my aged head is not fast, funny or original.
Yes, the penultimate. Mea culpa. It’s the ‘whom whom’ construct with which I am unfamiliar.
I was having an Entish moment.
Enough said, old fruit.